Yahoo Japan Does Full Screen Beer Ads

Yahoo Japan Corp. will for the first time have a full-screen advertisement for a new product on its Web site from Monday, sources close to the company said Saturday.

“Asahi Breweries Ltd. will run the advertisement for its new “happoshu” low-malt beer product on Japan’s leading Internet portal until June 30, the sources said.” from Japan Times.

“If a user clicks on the new product banner on the main Web page, the Yahoo Japan logo will change to Asahi Honnama Aqua Blue, the name of the new product, and a full-screen advertisement will pop up, with the background color of the site turning to blue from white, the sources said.”

Yahoo Japan hopes to attract more advertisers by taking advantage of its dominant position in the industry, the sources said. The portal receives about 500 million hits a day.

This may be a large step in Search Engine Marketing and it will be interesting to see how current US Stock Market darling, Yahoo.com adapts the idea to the original search portal.

On a personal note, SearchEngineJournal.com is not a big fan of Asahi beer. We happen to enjoy Kirin Ichiban and the Kirin “High Quality, Good Times” Japanese beers or the occassional Chu-Hi. Maido! Ikki nomi! Maido Okini Gozaimasu!